The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan may be the most consequential moment of Joe Biden’s presidency. Several months into his term, in the hopes of having a victory photo-op for the 9/11 anniversary and enhancing his reputation, Biden disregarded warnings from his military advisors and executed a rushed withdrawal. This led to the rapid Taliban takeover and the tragic loss of 13 American service members in a terrorist attack at Kabul Airport. Biden’s approval ratings have never recovered from that failure, which erased all the progress made in a twenty-year war.
In addition to the lives lost, billions of dollars of weapons, vehicles, and equipment were left behind for the Taliban to do with as they pleased. According to some reports, Hamas terrorists may have used some of those weapons in their attack on Israel.
Who could have predicted such a thing would happen? It turns out that Joe Biden did.
It was Aug. 12, 2007, and Joe Biden was running for president. At a town hall meeting in Winterset, Iowa, then-Senator Biden was speaking to a small and unenthused group of people, trying to impress them with his foreign policy know-how about ending the war in Afghanistan.
“If tomorrow, the order goes out from the president — I’m the President of the United States; I issue an order — end the war today, begin to withdraw all American troops, it will take a year to get the American troops out. Do you hear me now? That’s the truth. It will take a year to get them physically out. Now if you leave all the equipment behind, you might be able to do it in seven months,” he said before leaning into some poor woman’s face. “And you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind, I promise they’re going to be used against your grandchild and mine someday.”
Buried 2007 video of Senator Joe Biden discussing troop removal from Afghanistan. It would be a shame if everyone saw this…
"And you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind I promise they're going to be used against your grandchild and mine some day" – The Big Guy pic.twitter.com/gWzDoh5DtR
— Gain of Fauci (@DschlopesIsBack) April 9, 2023
The internet never forgets, does it?
This would be amusing if the reality of what happened wasn’t so tragic. In addition to leaving billions of dollars in military weapons and equipment behind, the Biden administration also stranded American citizens.
How many exactly did the administration leave behind? Months after the withdrawal, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report showing that as many as 9,000 Americans were left behind in Afghanistan, and a House Foreign Affairs Committee investigation a year after the withdrawal put the number closer to 1,000.
An exact number isn’t quite clear because the Biden administration desperately tried to cover up the truth. Biden knew that there were still hundreds — maybe even thousands — of Americans stuck in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, yet his administration assured the American people otherwise.
And Biden knew the consequences of his rushed withdrawal. He said exactly what would happen 14 years earlier — and did it anyway.
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